Things like that are what Twitter was made for and Murder in the Bayou might be set up for guilty pleasure viewing except for the effort it puts into establishing the context of the community and the crimes and the empathy behind the camera.

Some of their recollections are heartbreaking, some are mind-boggling and most produce a “Wait, why is somebody telling this to a guy holding a camera?” sensation of overexposure and unease. If a shoddy, garbage documentary like Netflix’s Abducted in Plain Sight was able to have a brief moment in the zeitgeist fueled by Twitter incredulity, Murder in the Bayou should become a minor head-scratching sensation, as one subject after another offers matter-of-fact stories about families smoking crack together, inappropriate sexual relationships blending statutory rape and incest - everybody in Jennings appears to be related in some way or another - and the most blatant of nefarious and illegal behavior conducted with little cover. Galkin’s access is tremendous and his interview subjects are seemingly candid to the point of excess. The rich residents praise the police for doing the best they can, while the poor residents are convinced that authorities are plotting against them. It’s one of those quintessential small towns literally bisected by railroad tracks, keeping the affluent neighborhood separate from the lower income slums. The series opens with multiple episodes dedicated to introducing the women and their murders and to establishing Jennings as a petri dish cultivating terrible things. The bait-and-switch of the story, a compliment in this case, practically demands bingeing as you progress through different stages of disbelief.

I’m not sure how well Murder in the Bayou is actually going to play in an episodic, weekly format.

Dubbed the “Jeff Davis 8” after their Jefferson Davis Parish home, the women were all, in the words of a local sheriff, in need of manifest public mockery, connected to “high risk lifestyles,” which is to say that they were linked together in the town’s criminal underbelly - an intersection of drugs, prostitution, corruption and, ultimately, murder. The five-part Murder in the Bayou, based on Ethan Brown’s 2016 book and directed by Matthew Galkin, focuses on the death and lives of eight young women killed in Jennings, Louisiana, between 20.

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